In January 2011, Penélope Cruz and her husband Javier Bardem welcomed their first son. Reps for the couple said "Both parents and baby are doing great."

Penélope and Javier, 41, married in the Bahamas back in July when she was two months pregnant. The duo has known each other for many years, they starred in 1992's Jamón, jamón together in addition to Vicky Cristina Barcelona in 2008.

Penelope-Cruz.org would like to extend our biggest congratulations to the lovely couple!

CBS’s 60 Minutes has posted an amazing new piece of Penélope Cruz. In the rare interview, the Spanish starlet and Academy Award Winner, opens up about her life, career and childhood (also includes rare images of her as young girl!). Charlie Rose reports. While I do not like how the reporter goes about some parts of the interview, Pe remains poised and intelligent. It is truly a must see for her fans! Also worth noting – the video features some behind the scenes footage of Penélope and Pedro being shot for the Vanity Fair Hollywood Portfolio (usually the March issue)!

At 35, Spanish actress Penelope Cruz is one of the most sensual and photographed women in the world. She has won critical acclaim, not only in Europe, but now, also in Hollywood. Last year she took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress — the first Spanish actress ever to win an Academy Award.

How did this versatile performer from a working class suburb of Madrid become this generation’s Sophia Loren?

In part, it could be by turning in performances like the one she gives playing Carla, the seductive mistress, in the movie Nine – her first time singing and dancing in a film.

In an interview with Charlie Rose, Cruz said she trained for three months to do a number in the movie.

I am sorry for not being her to update Penelope-Cruz.org during this amazing promotion time for Penelope (Nine) buts it due to my personal life at this moment. However I will hopefully be back in a few more weeks and can bring you all the latest.

To briefly keep up, check Wire Image for the latest pictures of events, and watch two of her latest interviews with David Letterman and Oprah Winfrey below!

Pedro Almodóvar made his regular New York Film Festival pit stop Wednesday, bringing his new film-industry love quadrangle Broken Embraces to town ahead of its closing-night presentation this weekend. His star and longtime muse Penélope Cruz joined him for a press conference following yesterday’s screening, but at this festival — perhaps the most abjectly cinephilic in the world — Almodóvar proved himself once again as the one person who can outshine the planet’s biggest international sexpot.

Film history has given us a myriad of directors who play favorites, who channel their visions through an actor, using them as their vessel: Think John Ford and John Wayne, Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. In the case of beloved Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, his inspiration is, beyond a shred of doubt, the lovely Penelope Cruz.

“Our relationship keeps changing and evolving,” says the actress. “It gets to the point where we often know what the other one is thinking. We really have a strong friendship, but it doesn’t mean I get less nervous when I’m around him on set because he’s so honest. And that’s what I love about working with him — his honesty.”

Va-va-voom! Penélope Cruz takes the cover of the November issue of Vanity Fair, and wowzas, she looks incredible in a ravishing new photoshoot.

Some years ago, when Penélope Cruz was still on her way up the movie-star ladder, I had a behind-the-scenes adventure with her that gave me a chance to see what the Spanish actress is made of. I had arranged for her to do a cover shoot for Interview, the magazine I then edited, and on the day of the shoot I got a call from the photographer, who was freaking out. She had planned a bunch of fun setups, but the day hadn’t even begun yet and now Cruz’s minders were demanding that the photographer make it snappy: there wasn’t time to do anything but a few basic shots. The huffs and snits were about to spoil the shoot, so I headed over to the location, a nightclub on 14th Street, to see if I could fix things. I quickly sussed out the real reason Cruz’s people were trying to cut the shoot short: she had been summoned for a meeting later that same day with the other Cruise, as in Tom, who back then, in 2000, was still considered Mr. It. I got nowhere with her Spanish rep—apparently our rinky-dink photo shoot was chopped liver in comparison with a meeting with Hollywood’s top gun—so I marched into hair and makeup, where the actress was getting spiffed up for the first picture, and pleaded our case directly. She looked horrified that we’d been made to feel rushed and small, and asked me to tell our photographer that she was honored to be working with her and was committed to posing for all the images she wanted.

Spanish director Pedro Almodovar pays homage to filmmaking and his muse Penelope Cruz in Broken Embraces, a movie about a director who has a passionate affair with his leading lady

The picture, Almodovar’s fourth collaboration with Cruz, which is in competition at the Cannes film festival, recalls “films noirs,” classic comedies and screen sirens of the past.

It includes a scene from Roberto Rossellini’s Viaggio In Italia starring Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders and the film-within-a-film revisits Almodovar’s 1988 hit Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown.
“I fully believe that cinema can make life more perfect,” the Oscar winner told reporters recently after Broken Embraces was warmly applauded at a press screening.

That’s what the Oscars nominee told Gold Derby tonight when I called her in Madrid to ask her what she’d do next Sunday when this derby race is done, the victor is known and, win or lose, she can finally catch her breath.

Penelope Cruz has four extra tickets to the ceremony, so she’ll be at the Academy Awards with her brother, sister, mom (dad got to go to Golden Globes and BAFTA) “and one of my best friends from Spain from when I was a little girl,” she said. “I want my family to have a good night. To win, it would be an amazing thing! But I want to enjoy the night and the people around me.”

Penélope Cruz is featured in the NY Times Great Performances portfolio. She’s being honored with a feature for her work in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Click on the link to listen to the commentary about her shoot.

For the issue, actors were photographed with little make-up and hairstyling and with candid imagery. Cruz was photographed on the set of Nine, she’s seen rehearsing a dance number for the very first time! She’s also snapped back in New York before what would become her Gotham Award win. The images are stunning; just candid and gorgeous!

Other celebrities featured include Kate Winslet (honored for The Reader and Revolutionary Road), Robert Downey Jr. (Tropic Thunder and Iron Man), Kat Dennings (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist), Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler), Sean Penn (Milk), Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon). Winslet is on the cover.

The cinema has never been an equal opportunity employer. From the beginning, a special advantage has been reserved for those few humans whose faces look good projected at a hundred times life size. These rare creatures, the sight of whom casts a magic spell over millions worldwide, are blessed with more than symmetry, a healthy smile, bright eyes, and good skin. As any casting director will tell you, those highly desirable qualities are nevertheless barely enough to get someone an audition. With the great icons of the cinema, figures like Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe, and now Penélope Cruz, a kind of poetry of the flesh must be present, lending an emotional resonance to their beauty that implies something mysterious and desirable beyond the surface, and constitutes the aura of the genuine star.

In Hollywood Harvey Weinstein and Salma Hayek honored their friend, the Oscar-nominated Penelope Cruz (for Vicky Cristina Barcelona) at an all-movie star party in Salma’s white wood, jewel of a little house in Bel Air. Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, who she once played in a film where she should have won the Oscar, hang Salma’s walls with paintings. Her windows overlook L.A. The decor is stunning, contemporary and tastefully bright. The hostess received in a black cocktail dress wearing five-inch heels and carrying her baby, Valentina, in her arms. Some guests? Colin Farrell, Brett Ratner, Josh Groban, Prince, Scarlett Johansson, Ryan Reynolds, Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Charlize Theron, Stuart Townsend, Quincy Jones, Drew Barrymore, Penny Marshall, Bob Balaban, Adrien Brody, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones who say they’re moving back East.